What could be more convenient than an ice box? Many things now, but in my 1960’s childhood, the ice box was the height of convenience.
This freezer compartment was aptly nicknamed, because it was always icing up. It needed boiling water poured into the ice trays to bring its thick crust of frosting crashing down into the tray below. But even when caked up, you could still squeeze in a packet of fish fingers and half a bag of frozen peas, bought from the benevolent Captain Birdseye.
This was the beginning of a new era where children could be fed without worrying what was in the larder. It was the dawning of the age of convenience.
While few of us would wish to return to a life before white goods, striving for convenience has a down side. It is undoubtedly convenient to have held on one device what used to be a radio, telephone and television, along with reference books and maps, but we struggle now not to be distracted by the allure of an infinite iWorld, losing far more time than we might ever have gained by their agglomeration.
Set alongside convenience, obedience seems an antiquated virtue, but it may be one which gets us far further in complicated times. We need to learn to weave our way wisely through the multiples priorities and pressures we face.
On the evening of the twelfth day of Christmas, January 5th, the wise men arrive to bring their gifts to Jesus. Tradition tells us that they have had to make sense of astrological signs, seek counsel from the wicked King Herod, and then travel over moor and mountain to reach the stable. Despite every twist and turn in the road, they keep on course.
The circumstances we negotiate daily are rarely convenient; we are constantly calibrating and recalibrating our journey as new obstacles and challenges emerge. It’s obedience that helps us with this, shaping our priorities and goals. At every turn we are trying to manage complexity and to direct our efforts to a simple goal – choosing the right path.
There are no short cuts to obedience. New Year’s resolutions come all too easily to grief as we are caught up again in the hurly-burly of life. We need a process that is far more flexible and forgiving than shoring up our struggle to be a more virtuous self.
Wise people look less to themselves and their own resources and more to a guiding star. The star in the Bible story does a job as good as any satnav, stopping right over the place where Jesus lay. It reminds us that guidance involves following a path with a higher aim in mind, and there is none higher than to follow the heavenly light back to the source of glory.
We may go off track, but that is OK. The light is constant and stays there always for our seeking, to draw obedient travelers onward to their journey’s end.
